Telephone Mystery Shopping
Call Center Customer Service Evaluations
In addition to going on in person mystery shopping assignments, there are opportunities available for people interested in doing telephone mystery shopping.
Many companies operate call centers for sales or customer service, and they would be quite interested to learn about how the people they employ are doing when it comes to handling the many calls they receive each day.
Enter the telephone mystery shopper. These people are given an assignment in much the same way that an in-person mystery shopper gets instructions. The shopper is asked to make contact with the client company’s call center to ask a question or discuss a particular matter.
The call is recorded so that the client company’s owner and/or manager has detailed information about exactly how the telephone mystery shopper and the employee related to each other. The company that hired the mystery shopper will provide its client with a recording of the call, along with a detailed analysis of the conversation. This type of detail helps the client company to pinpoint where its strengths are and where it can improve in the area of customer service.
Armed with this valuable information, the client can reward employees who are performing well and provide extra training or coaching where necessary. As in the case of in person mystery shopping, companies operating call centers may choose to have telephone mystery shoppers work with them at regular intervals or during specific campaigns to give them the feedback they need to help their business grow.
A person who is considering taking a telephone mystery shopping assignment needs to be someone who is well spoken and who can follow detailed instructions to the letter. The ability to think on one’s feet is a good quality to have as well, since the conversation may take an unexpected turn. These people need to be able to blend in with the other types of callers the company receives and not make it obvious that they are working from a script.